This Buddha? Your Old Sun Isn't Playing That Role Anymore

On the day of the Myriad Demons Assembly, the Victorious Fighting Buddha smashed his own golden lotus body with his bare hands.

“I’m done being a Buddha!”

Five hundred years of imprisonment beneath the Five Elements Mountain, fourteen years of discipline on the scripture-seeking journey, and a century of lonely neglect after becoming a Buddha. Then he discovered that Mount Lingshan was siphoning the spiritual essence of the demon race in the name of “merit,” and that the monkey clan of Flower-Fruit Mountain, whom he had sworn to protect, had been driven to the brink of extinction.

Fragments of his golden body fell like rain, and the demonic heart that had lain dormant for a century suddenly blazed back to life.

He cast off three thousand merits of Buddhism, renounced his rank, and took up the dust-covered iron staff once more. The banner of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven flew again atop Flower-Fruit Mountain, and the eyes of all the demons in the Three Realms turned toward him.

The Heavenly Court was enraged, and Mount Lingshan shook. A hundred thousand celestial soldiers and five hundred Arhats joined forces and marched on the mountain.

But the monkey merely hefted his golden cudgel and faced the immortals and Buddhas filling the sky, wearing the same defiant smile he had shown five hundred years ago when he wreaked havoc in Heaven.

“Come on, let your old Great Sage see if you lofty gods and Buddhas can suppress me one more time!”